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Developing Arts
The development of arts in the game is based on what we call skills. Since the developers chose to hide the experience information from the player this can sometimes be very confusing, but understanding how they work is necessary to understand how arts are learned and developed. __TOC__ Basics Most Arts and some other actions (like regular attacks) have one or more skills associated with them which will increase when the Arts are used. Whenever a battle round starts, skills are increased based on the commands given to the characters, and then further increased if/when the characters actually get to perform the command. This is important because half of the skill gains happens without actual fighting, characters will improve even if the enemies die before they get their turn. The base experience gained towards skills is 2, however there are two factors that can increase this: Battle Rank and Chain Count. The first one modifies the gained XP based on the BR difference between the party and the monsters. Unfortunately the amount is so small that it will get rounded down to 0 by the calculations unless the BR difference is 50 or greater in the monsters' favor (+50% experience), and is thus almost impossible to achieve. It should also be noted here that no amount of BR difference in the player's favor will lower the XP, so fighting lower level monsters is an effective way of gaining skills without raising BR. Next the Battle Chain is taken into account. Since the base XP is 2 this modifier gets rounded down to the nearest 50% as well: +50% experience from 250 chains, and +100% experience from 400 chains. Going any higher will not increase the modifier any further. This is calculated separately after the BR difference, which makes it impossible to utilize BR modifiers lower than 50% by combining them with a chain modifier. Experience gained with skills in turn increases their level based on the following table. Note that these numbers are from the PC version of the game, the XBOX requirements are slightly different (Wield Styles gain levels slower and Weapon Types gain levels faster on the XBOX). The Low Mystic Skills are Invocations, Evocations, and Hexes, and the High Mystic Skills are Remedies, Psionics, and Wards. Lotions requires significantly less experience for the first two levels than anything else, this is because its lowest rank art (Antivenin) is too situational, this enables characters with this skill to get past having to use this art to improve their skill level. The skill levels are used to determine what Arts a character is able learn, and what Classes he or she can change into. While most Arts only require a single skill, weapon specific Combat Arts require both a Wield Style and a Weapon Type skill. Weapon Arts, while classed as Special Arts, are also learned with a Wield Style and a Weapon Type skill. Influencing Class changes often requires some knowledge of the skill levels, unfortunately finding them out without seeing the numbers can be quite difficult. There are two ways to do this based on the list of arts that can be viewed on the character screen. The simple way is to find the highest ranked art which requires the given skill and look up the level required for it. This is useful at the beginning of the game and for low level skills, but is not very accurate since there can be multiple level gaps between the art ranks. The more precise method is to look up each individual art level belonging to a skill, find out the amount of xp required to obtain them, and then add these together to get an approximate value of the skill experience. Unfortunately neither of these methods can account for weapon/wield style changes and Rush's mystic chance, but they are usually accurate enough to determine mystic/item/weapon skill correlation, which is an important factor for changing classes. Combat Arts Learning Combat Art learning is based on two skill categories: Wield Styles, and Weapon Types. Both of those skills are improved by performing Combat Arts, or Weapon Arts, but only the Wield Style is improved by regular attacks (instead they give XP to the weapons, which leads to the +1, +2 etc weapons). For weapon types this is always straightforward, the experience is gained with the weapon type used. Wield Styles, on the other hand, are a little trickier. The XP gained at the start of a combat round is based on the Wield Style the character is in when the turn begins, however the XP gained when an action is performed is based on the Wield Style used to perform it. On the XBOX version characters start every battle with the default Wield Style for their equipped weapon, while the PC version lets the player specify the default wield style for everyone. The skill level requirements for learning Combat Arts are as follows: Development Performing Combat Arts not only increases the respective wield and weapon skills, but also gives art specific experience. When this experience reaches certain levels, the art is upgraded, which usually means improved damage and/or speed statistics, and at every odd tier a reduced AP cost. As with learning, the XP required for an art to upgrade depends on its Rank: Strength / Speed modifiers Combat Arts can also be modified for greater strength or higher speed. This is represented by positive or negative experience levels, with the positive direction being Strength modification (Mighty/Peerless), and the negative direction being Speed modification (Nimble/Swift). Thus, the base XP for Combat Art modification is either +2 or -2. This value is defined by the individual weapon used to perform the art, some weapons develop faster arts, some develop stronger ones. The experience required to reach the specific art levels is: * Mighty/Nimble: +/- 55 XP * Peerless/Swift: +/- 577 XP The XP gained towards art modification is calculated the same way as any other skill-related experience and is thus affected by the same factors. However, since it's a bidirectional system, changing to a weapon that gives a different modifier cannot modify the art in the other direction until the previous modification is undone (XP reaches 0). A special case for art modifiers is Dual Wielding two weapons with different modifiers, this will result in no experience gained in either direction. Mystic Arts Learning Mystic Arts, unlike Combat Arts, start with the first art already learned when a mystic skill is obtained, this could be considered the "regular attack" of the skill, even though it's not always an offensive spell. The learning and development of Mystic Arts is governed by a system called Mystic Chance. The most notable difference between this and the other arts is that Mystic Chance only allows one art to be learned or upgraded in a single battle, and this is always done after the battle. To learn or upgrade a Mystic Art, the character first has to trigger a Mystic Chance. Gaining a level in a mystic skill always triggers a Mystic Chance. Using any Mystic Art gives a 5% / 15% chance of triggering one depending on whether it is just put into the command chain or actually executed, and gaining enough experience in an individual art to make it available for upgrading also gives a 80% chance. Only one Mystic Chance can occur per character per battle though, even if multiple events would trigger it. Once a Mystic Chance has been triggered, a list of available arts is built by the game. If there are any arts with enough experience to upgrade, they will be added to this list first. Arts whose mystic rank (see table below) matches that of the highest known one will also be available if the skill requirement is met. To learn an art of a new mystic rank all arts from the previous rank must be learned, and one of them needs to be at least Tier II. Wind Shear + Double Time II for example qualifies for Caustic Blast if the skill level is at least 6. If there are no arts meeting any of the above criteria, there is still a small (5%) chance that an already known art (picked randomly) will be available for upgrading, but otherwise the Mystic Chance is wasted and nothing is learned. Arts improved by this random chance will get their art XP readjusted to the new art level. For Rush, the Arts available in a Mystic Chance will be displayed on the screen and the player is allowed to choose which art to learn or upgrade. For any other character the game will randomly select an art from the list. The skill level requirements for learning new Mystic Arts can be seen in the table below. Since the mystic rank is often different from the art's displayed rank, the individual arts are listed as well. Development The upgrading of Mystic Arts is done through the same Mystic Chance system that handles learning them. Like the other arts, they still need a certain amount of experience to upgrade, which is gained the same way: through using the art. However they are not automatically upgraded when the experience reaches the required level, instead they can trigger a Mystic Chance. Arts that have enough experience to upgrade cannot gain any further XP until upgraded, this also means that they only have the base 5% chance for triggering Mystic Chance at this point. The individual art experience required for upgrades is based on the mystic ranks of the arts. Remedies use a different progression than the other arts, they are listed in a separate table: Item Arts Learning Similar to Mystic Arts, the first Art in the Item Art categories is automatically learned when a character obtains the skill, but any subsequent ones are unlocked by improving it. Unlike Combat and Mystic Arts, which all expend AP when used, Item Arts use items called Consumables instead. Because of this, item skills are very easy to improve as long as the player has the necessary funds to supply the consumables. The higher rank Item Arts consequently require more expensive materials to use. Most item skills use uniform skill requirements for new art learning, the only exception being Traps, which has one less art to learn than the others, and its final art is also obtainable sooner. Development Using Item Arts also gives experience to the individual art, which is used to upgrade the art. Upgraded item arts usually do more damage or healing, but more importantly they take less consumables to use. Unfortunately the duration of buffing arts (Potions, Wards) does not increase with these upgrades, but most Potions arts improve an additional stat at higher tiers (IV-V). As with learning, the XP required for an art to upgrade depends on its Rank: Weapon Arts Category:Game Mechanics